FX's Archer is headed to deep space for Alien-esque Season 10

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Adam Reed has long been the sole creative force behind FX’s (and then FXX’s) super-spy pastiche Archer. Just finishing its ninth season, the animated show has rebooted, rewritten, and regurgitated so many plotlines and genres that even Reed has trouble keeping track of what’s going on.

**This story contains spoilers for Archer**

The characters have been drug runners, country music stars, noir detectives, pulp adventurers, and yes, super-spies. Now, as the finale teased, the crew is going to space. Yes, after Sterling Archer - ahem - died in the season finale, the brief flashes of Season 10 show him alive and well aboard an Alien-like spaceship. Waking up out of an Alien-like pod, panning past an Alien-like lab - you get the picture.

Confirming what we were all thinking, Reed was interviewed at Uproxx and spilled some beans on the next season. Speaking to the next season’s influence, Reed said the season would bring in “a lot of 70’s sci-fi. Like Aliens, Black Hole, and even some old Atari game covers.” This is going full retro. Retro-futurism, at least. “The goal is to have it look like a set designer’s version of the future but that set designer lives in 1975,” Reed said.

“So, some of the set descriptions were like the ship where the keys go ‘clackity-clack’ and there are floppy disks instead of holograms. So, it’s not gonna be this shimmering white, sort of… It’s not Logan’s Run. I’ll say that. It’s more blue collar, I guess.” Does leaning on the mining and shipping aesthetic of Alien mean we’ll actually see some aliens?

It does, Reed confirms. “We are gonna see some xenomorphs. Not the ones from Alien. The very first episode they immediately, and through no good idea, the xenomorphs board their ship. And that will sort of drive the action for the first couple of episodes.” Looks like another genre-bending adventure for the Archer crew is starting off as quickly and crazily as getting sucked out of an airlock.